Earlier this morning I came across the most original campaign ad/drive ever. I simply had to share it with everyone and give any who want to join the revolution a chance. I've already budgeted a contribution for a week from Friday.

Information below the fold

The runoffs for Attorney General and State House and Senate are happening a week from today.  The Attorney General race is important due to the fact that it is the only other statewide office Democrats hold other than Lt. Governor.  The encouraging fact is that in the October 20th open primary, Democrats got 68% of the combined vote, while the Republican only got 32%.  This is still an important race and the DNC should be working to make sure that Democrats hold the office next Saturday.  The otehr important races are for the State Senate and State House.  Democrats currently control both.  

Okay, I usually laugh and blow off the usual asshattery that is the government of the proud state of Texas. It is a vaudville show full of prat falls and jumbled justice jousting. But for the most part, I figured the monkeys we had in Austin were not wholescale frauds. How wrong I was. How very, very wrong.

WTF TEXAS!

Former Delegate Albert Pollard addressed the Stafford County Democrats Saturday, April 28. Pollard is the Democratic candidate to replace retiring Republican State Senator John Chichester in the 28th Senatorial District.

(cross-posted at FlaPolitics)

Tuesday was a great day for the Florida Democratic Party – we elected Democrat Darren Soto to a Republican-held seat in the State House District 49 Special Election!

This is huge, and Republicans are already trying to spin the heck out of this major loss, claiming that they expected to lose and/or that it doesn’t mean anything for the future. (My question to them: So why did you waste tens of thousands of dollars on the race?)

The truth is that the election of Darren Soto bodes extremely well for the future of the Democratic Party in Florida. This is the pivotal I-4 corridor, and the Party’s new, revitalized ground operation proved it can deliver a majority of voters who care about positive change for the people.

Last Fall the progressive Dems here in Delaware worked hard to elect John Kowalko in the 25th State Rep. District.  He had an uphill battle against an 18-year incumbent and he'd lost to her in 2004.  But John has courage and tenacity and he won.  So he went to Dover and introduced a bill that required former State Reps and Senators to spend one year out of the General Assembly before they could come back as lobbyist. Which set off the dominoes in Delaware.

The Republican Party holds a 23-18 lead in the Delaware House.  We have a chance tomorrow in HD-07 to make that 22-19 after House Majority Leader Wayne Smith walked out of the House though the revolving door to the Delaware Healthcare Association, the industry group for hospital and HMOs.

Please bear with me: this diary will have you smiling, and I think you can agree that we could all use some good news now and then in the final dark years of BushWorld.

Last week at Blue Hampshire State Representative Jim Splaine graced us with a diary, Iraq: This Déjà Vu Is Insane, wherein he wrote:

But this war has to end.  We don't need a target date to pull out.  We just need to get out.  We need to apologize for the attack, reduce our troop level to zero, get our brave soldiers home safely, claim the good we did by getting Saddam and his Republican Guard out of power, and work diplomatically with the Iraq government and regional interests to try to bring some stability to that part of the world.  That makes more sense than what we're doing now.

Texas is growing.  As we have heard in various news reports lately, people from around the country are moving to Texas and several other Western and southern states.  Texas is expected to gain 3 or 4 additional seats in the U.S House of representatives after the next census in 2010.  This has been spun as very bad news for Dems.  3 or 4 more seats that will go to the Repubs right?

Perhaps not, follow me below the fold...

Yesterday, control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives shifted from Republican to Democratic on the basis of a hand recount in a single race, giving Barbara McIlvaine Smith (D) a victory of 28 votes over Shannon Royer (R) in their race for the 156th district, 11,616 to 11,588.

But what's a hand recount really like?  Take a look at these actual 12 Scantron ballots about which there was question on voter intent, and, for each, scribble on a sheet of paper which candidate you believe was credited for the vote on each based on the markings on the bubbles.  (Right column, second race.)

I'll wait.  No peeking below.
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Joe Vosicky is running for an open representative senate seat in Illinois.  The votes are still being counted with a 300 vote difference out of 27,000 votes.  He is a grassroots candidate and could probably use some support.  
Although Illinois is a "blue" state nationally, we are really a purple state with the Democrats controlling Chicago and the close suburbs and the Repugs controlling downstate and the collar counties.  The Repugs are in disarray with the country club variety versus the right-wing religious variety.  This seat would be a great pick up for populists.

The next Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives is not Jim Black. This according to Jim Black, who says he's out.
Meanwhile the people who speculated that Black was going to hang on are rethinking the horse race with James Crawford and Drew Saunders getting good play. Other top names running are Joe Hackney and Dan Blue--both much more progressive than Crawford and Saunders.

The soap opera of whether the Democrats or the Republicans shall control the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, with a bare minimum of 102 out of 203 seats, continues, as Barbara McIlvaine Smith's shocking apparent upset victory from West Chester--likely the first Democrat to win the seat since the Civil War--comes under scrutiny in a retabulation of all the votes.  There is a copious paper trail here, as the vast majority of the votes cast were cast on computer scan cards.

The Republicans,though,controlled the entire election machinery; it hardly seems likely that there could be any pattern of deliberate errors on behalf of the Democrat. While Republican lawyers are aggressively fighting for their clients, Republican legislators and staff have an air of resignation about them.  "The Democrats won, and we lost," many are saying.

Friends, does anyone have a link illustrating which State Houses changed hands in the '06 elections? I am having trouble locating one source documenting all states, yet I remember seeing links to it around these parts. If anyone can be of help, I appreciate it in advance!
I know that six governorships changed hands, and I am interested to see a comparison between US House votes, US Senate Votes, and the corresponding State Houses.

Some time ago (I can't find the frickin' diary, but I know it's out there somewhere), I wrote a story in which I promised that, if my current state representative ran for a vacant State Senate seat and won, that I would run for his House seat.

Well, it happened.  And so now we have a conundrum.

Certainly I can't be forced to keep my word in this circumstance - and everyone would understand if I said, "no, I need to concentrate on other things."  But here's the thing.

Although the next census won't be until 2010, and the next redistricting (unless your in Texas) won't be until 2012, I thought it would be nice to know what's going on in our state houses.  Does anyone know?

I've don't the tallying in AZ and the Dems have picked up a few seats in both the Senate and the House.  We have successfully prevented the Republicans from getting a 2/3rds majority that could override Governor Napalitano's veto.  We're at 12 seats of 30 in the Senate and 26 seats of 60 in the house.

In AZ we've got an "independent redistricting" commission, though I'm not sure how it works.  Anyhow, imput from others is definately welcome.  Thanks!

I volunteer my diary for today for everyone wishing to to happy dances about their state legislatures.  Stateline.org (A Pew site) has a good writeup of Dem pickups nationwide, most dramatically:

Democratic gains vastly outnumbered Republican gains in the nation's state legislatures Nov. 7, enough to take control of legislative chambers in at least six states -- including the New Hampshire House for the first time since at least 1922.

Democrats also took control of the Iowa House, Senate and governor's mansion for the first time in 40 years. The party gained five seats in the Iowa House and now has a 54-45 majority, with one seat undecided, according to preliminary results reported by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Democrats moved the state Senate from a tie to a 29-21 majority, according to NCSL. Democrat Chet Culver defeated U.S. Rep. Jim Nussle in the gubernatorial race to replace outgoing Gov. Tom Vilsack (D).

Not much has been reported about the state legislative races, as can be expected with the bug news from Washington.

So let's put it all together here as a report on what went on below the radar of a national Democratic wave...

Was there any backwash?